As a Palestinian, she says, obtaining Israeli citizenship was the only way she could keep her family together. But she had never claimed to be Saudi.

And finally, there’s Abdulrahman Al-Atawi, a Saudi citizen held in an Israeli jail for six years after inadvertently crossing into Israel in the Sinai. Press reports that he, too, has sought Israeli asylum are false, he says:

Crossroads Arabia is written by a former US foreign service officer who has had two tours in Saudi Arabia, 1981-83, 2001-03, who reads and speaks Arabic and has spent the bulk of his career in the Middle East, with assignments in Tunisia, Egypt, Syria and Bahrain in addition to those in the KSA.